Microsoft Virtualization Support for SQL Server

Virtualization has been a tremendous enabler in helping organizations improve recovery readiness within their business critical systems. Many of these mission-critical backend systems run Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, MySQL, and PostgreSQL and are designed for "always on" availability. I previously provided some context for the momentum driving server virtualization projects on KTG's blog site blog.kennedytechgroup.com.

Although Microsoft has provided clustering as part of the Enterprise version of their server software since the late 1990s (originally dubbed "Wolfpack" in Windows NT 4.0), they've been slow to provide full support for virtualized deployments through CSS (Microsoft Customer Service and Support).

Just recently, Microsoft provided updates to their policy for virtualization support for SQL Server Clustering, writing on their official blog for CSS SQL Support.

As reported, virtualization is now supported for SQL 2005 and SQL 2008 guests provided the hardware virtualization vendor (the hypervisor) meets the requirements outlined in the The Microsoft Support Policy for Windows Server 2008 Failover Clusters (MSKB943984).

Validated products are listed on the Windows Server Virtualization Validation Program website.

Bob Ward of Microsoft writes:

Guest Failover Clustering is supported for SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008 in a virtual machine for Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008, and SVVP certified configurations provided both of the following requirements are met:

1. The Operating System running in the virtual machine (the “Guest Operating System”) is Windows Server 2008 or higher

2. The virtualization environment meets the requirements of Windows 2008 Failover Clustering as documented at The Microsoft Support Policy for Windows Server 2008 Failover Clusters

Additonal information:

Support policy for Microsoft SQL Server products that are running in a hardware virtualization environment: http://support.microsoft.com/?id=956893

Support policy for Microsoft software running in non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/897615

Routine updates are provided on the Microsoft Customer Service and Support (CSS) SQL Support blog.